<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/5/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael T. Dean</b> <<a href="mailto:mtdean@thirdcontact.com">mtdean@thirdcontact.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 03/05/2006 02:41 PM, Mercury Morris wrote:<br><br>I was helping a friend diagnose a failed hard drive on his Myth box just<br>over a year ago. I concluded the drive's electronics got fried since<br>the BIOS wouldn't even recognize the drive. So he went out and bought
<br>what turned out to be a $200 IDE cable that came with a free 300GB HDD.<br>:) That was the first time in my life I've ever seen an IDE cable just<br>"die" while a system was running (gave up in the middle of a football
<br>game he was recording/watching with a group of people).<br><br>At least in his case, he could continue to use the old drive and just<br>add the new one. Using two motherboards is more expensive--that<br>involves buying new CPU, RAM, HDD, ...
<br><br></blockquote></div>Mike, <br>
<br>
Thanks for the story - $200 IDE cable! Looking at my situation in that light, I have a $162 SATA cable. <br>
<br>
When my system died, it was recording a program. There was no
EarthQuake, no thunderstorm, no nothing. "How in hell could a
cable just fail like that", is what I thought today when it turned out
that was what happened. The cables were never even considered as
the cause of the failure.<br>
<br>
Now, like your friend with the free 300GB HDD, I can use the spare
motherboard to build another system. I'm going through the
process of putting the original motherboard back in service because the
new one is extremely noisy, and I don't want to have to re-install
nvram-wakeup in case the BIOS's are enough different to require it.<br>
<br>
Thanks again for your somewhat sympathetic note. It's nice to
know that I'm not alone in buying the "higher-priced" components.<br>
<br>
-- <br>
MM<br>
<br>